


Marking Time

by screamingsongbird16



Category: Joker Game (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for the novels, Watches!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 14:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8492953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamingsongbird16/pseuds/screamingsongbird16
Summary: “Sir?” Miyoshi dared ask.  “Are these being issued to us by the military?” “No,” Yuuki told him.  Told them all.  He could tell the moment each one came to the correct conclusion.“Thanks, Yuuki-san!” Hatano blurted out, grinning cheekily.  “I’ll treasure it forever!”
Yuuki's thought on his boys, the time he marked with them, and the gift he gave them, to help them hold onto it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Erstelle_Rin_Bright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erstelle_Rin_Bright/gifts).



Spoiler Warning: Some end game events for the novels are briefly mentioned in this fic.

 

 

  

            Yuuki was not a man given to frivolities.  Which was not to say they were completely alien to him.  He allowed himself the odd indulgence.  Usually smaller things, of the culinary variety, with a tendency toward sweetness.  But spending large sums on needless things, for himself or others was not Yuuki’s way.  For most of his life, Yuuki had no one but himself that he wanted to spend his money on anyways.  Until one day he did.

            There was no definite date when Yuuki started to realize just how well the role of being a mentor suited him.  But sometime over the course of molding the next generation of Japanese spies into his own image, the job became more than just a job.  And his students became more than just the cards in his hand, waiting to be put into play.  It was even before he finished discarding the lesser candidates.  The low value cards that wouldn’t work for his strategies.  Even then, he’d identified his face cards, his aces, and of course, his wild cards. 

            He’d watched, from a distance, hiding his approval, as they came together, not at all surprised.  Some would consider it a case of like calling to like.  Yuuki deemed it the elite recognizing their own.  And the creative ways they managed to get rid of certain other students who proved both bothersome and unworthy . . . those amused Yuuki.  Dealing with annoyances and threats to the mission was also part of being a spy. 

            Despite his very best attempts to remain aloof and keep a professional detachment, Yuuki found himself rapidly growing fond of his students.  They were an endless source of amusement, with their little games and manipulations.  And as their training progressed, they became a source of pride. 

            When their final examinations were complete, and all their trials taken, and the final eight moved into their permanent headquarters in the Greater East Asia Culture Society, Yuuki found himself facing a temptation he’d never known before.  He wanted to get them something.  Something nice.  Something to let them know that he acknowledged them.  A ridiculous urge.  He knew it.  He did.  Yet it would not go away.

            The amount of time he wasted thinking on the matter would have shamed him if anyone had ever known about it.  No one ever did.  Not exactly.  Years later, after tragedy, and experiencing for the first time the kind of pain that only family can force you to feel, after everything he’d worked for fell apart, and he and his students were betrayed, and had to flee . . . and then, after finally putting everything back together, and adjusting to a new life, in a new place, with new goals . . . after all that Yuuki would admit to one of them, just once, how long he’d spent thinking about their gift.  He underexaggerated the amount of time, to save face, and the knowing smirk on his listener’s face said he knew as much, but he couldn’t have possibly guessed just how long it had taken Yuuki to pick out the perfect gift for his boys.

            Watches, were what he finally decided to go with.  Matching watches, in a moment of sentimental idiocy.  Which meant they couldn’t wear them on missions, or any time they went undercover.  It would have been the absolute height of stupidity for D-Agency spies to have their cover blown because one of their marks recognized them by their wristwatches.  The practicality factor for his gift then dropped at least eighty percent.  What good were watches you could only rarely wear?  But the whole point of this pointless action was to give them a keepsake of sorts.  Something they would all have, and that they’d know the others all had too.  And at least it was better than a ridiculously large, worthless coin, like some military idiots were so fond of.

            The brand Yuuki chose for them was Shirato.  One of the higher end Japanese brands, but not at the level of some of those foreign companies, who took the art of watchmaking to a whole new level.  And the design he chose for them was simple, but timeless.  The clock was left mostly unnumbered, with the twelve at the top being the sole exception.  All other numbers were replaced with simple lines.  The minutes were marked clearly.  The clock face was set in a rounded out, silver trimmed rectangle.  Its hands were made of gold.  Real gold.  Yuuki insisted on that.  And the bands that they were worn on were made of reddish-tan leather.  Two of those bands had to be custom made, to account for the tiny wrists of his two youngest spies. 

            The looks he got when he presented his spies with their gifts were mostly blank.  Yuuki approved.  Blank looks were better than visible confusion.  He knew they were going over the same points in their minds that Yuuki himself had gone over when he was trying to talk himself out of going down this foolish, pointless path.

            “Sir?” Miyoshi dared ask.  “Are these being issued to us by the military?”

            “No,” Yuuki told him.  Told them all.  He could tell the moment each one came to the correct conclusion.

            “Thanks, Yuuki-san!” Hatano blurted out, grinning cheekily.  “I’ll treasure it forever!”

            “That’s Lt. Colonel Yuuki to you,” barked Sakuma, scandalized.

            “You’re just jealous Yuuki-san didn’t give you one,” Hatano returned.  “Now pay the penalty fee for acting too military!”

            Normally that would have been a remark that Yuuki would have let slide.  He couldn’t fine Sakuma _every_ time he acted too military, or Sakuma would end up paying more than he was making at his job.  But now it provided him a convenient excuse to change the topic of conversation.  Later, Yuuki would wonder if Hatano had done that deliberately.  The boy had a gift for goading people into acting exactly the way he wanted them to.  But at the time Yuuki was just glad for the excuse.  “You heard him.  Pay up.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

            The watches saw more use than Yuuki thought they would.  The boys wore them around D-Agency, almost constantly, removing them before leaving the Agency, like adulterers in the Western world removing their wedding bands before a night out on the town.  And Yuuki did wonder why they bothered.  The most likely reason he came up with was that they wanted to show appreciation for his gift.  And Yuuki found himself slightly touched.  He’d expected the watches to end up in their footlockers, and kept out of sight and out of mind for years.  Perhaps they’d see daylight years down the road, after some of them had retired from the spy game.  More likely, they would be gotten rid of upon retirement.  Fear that one of the others had worn his and let the wrong person see it would keep most from ever wearing them.  At least, that’s how Yuuki had thought things would go.

            When Odagiri left, he left his watch behind, in his otherwise empty footlocker.  He didn’t tell Yuuki that.  But when Odagiri had left, Yuuki had seen it on his face.  That guilt.  The sense of failure.  The fear that he was a disappointment.  After Odagiri’s spy training overrode his resolve to retire from a spy’s life, and Yuuki started getting coded messages from Manchuria, in which Odagiri gave thorough and detailed information about areas of opportunity in Manchuria that D-Agency could exploit, including, but not limited to the tendency a certain Soviet undersecretary had for burning all his money on a Harbin nightclub girl, Yuuki retrieved Odagiri’s watch from his otherwise empty footlocker and mailed it to him.  “You’ve earned this,” was the only message he included.

            The others all left their watches behind at D-Agency too, when they were sent on missions.  But rather than simply leave them in their footlockers, with their spare clothes and few personal effects, they came up with a new tradition.  They entrusted them to Yuuki.

            Jitsui was the first to start that.  And Yuuki never knew why.  But the day before he was to enter Shirahata’s service as a houseboy, he came to Yuuki with his watch, in the protective case it had come in.  “Can I trouble you to keep this safe for me, Yuuki-san?”

            Yuuki had regarded him with a stern expression at this request.  “You feel your footlocker isn’t secure enough?”

            “You feel it is secure enough?” Jitsui returned, his expression growing a bit mischievous as his eyes widened in over-exaggerated innocence.  “I share a room with a bunch of nosy spies.  All of whom can pick a lock.”

            All of whom also had their own watches.  And as far as Yuuki knew, there was no game amongst them to try to steal one another’s watches, or any of their other possessions.  But he saw no harm in holding onto it for Jitsui.  Or Hatano, Miyoshi, or Kaminaga, after each one of them approached Yuuki, individually, with the same request, before leaving for their own deep cover missions abroad.  The ones who stayed and worked domestically, or took shorter trips to foreign countries, seemed to follow a different rule.  Their watches remained safe in their footlockers.  Yuuki came up with half a dozen different reasons for why they might have come up with this system, and what their reasoning was.  But he never did ask, so he never did find out for sure.

 

 

* * *

 

 

            Miyoshi.  Kaminaga.  Hatano.  Fukumoto.  Odagiri.  Jitsui.  Amari.  Tazaki.

            And Yuuki himself.

            They were men who didn’t exist.  And when all was said and done, none of the work they did at D-Agency changed a thing.  Not in the long run.  It could have.  If the information they’d risked their lives to retrieve had been put to any sort of use by those Yuuki turned it over to, everything could have gone a completely different way.  But instead it was buried.  As was any trace of their existence.  By the country they had served.  The country that had tried to bury them.  Literally.  There were a few documents in the country they defected to that referenced their aliases.  And their contributions to ending the war.  But at Yuuki’s request, all that information was redacted.  He did it for his boys’ safety.  And his new country decided that the information he’d given them was worth that much.  If he’d asked for more, he was reasonably certain he would have received it.  But anonymity was enough.  Anonymity was safety for him, and his boys.  And so at the end of the war, the spies of D-Agency were written out of existence.

            But nothing would ever change the fact that, for awhile, they had lived together.  Worked together.  Given one another a reprieve from the pitch black solitude that Yuuki had believed would make up the majority of their lives.  Which was why Yuuki had chosen to get them watches, of all things.  So, when it was over, they’d have some proof, some lasting symbol, of the time they’d marked together.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Notes: This was a gift fic for Erstelle_Rin_Bright, who requested something about our demon king.  I hope it lived up to your hopes. :)

 

The watches were inspired by the official Joker Game merchandise watches.  You can see them here: <http://paranoid-rhythm.tumblr.com/image/151820855359>

 

Also, and this is kind of a personal request for help, but I’m looking for some WWII spy novels.  Specifically ones that feature an American spymaster, operating in Europe during the war.  Preferably in France, but in nearby countries also works.  And if possible, and I know this is a very long shot, but I’m looking for a spymaster who’s also a good man.  Kind of like Yuuki, who wouldn’t leave his spies out to dry if he could prevent it, and would never deliberately betray them.  I know I’m being stupidly specific, and it’s a very long shot, but if you know of any book with a character that’s even similar to what I described, please let me know!  It would be a huge help. :)


End file.
